The Beginning (2022)

Cremaster 5

Cremaster 5 is a five-act opera (sung in Hungarian) set in late-ninteenth century Budapest. The last film in the series, Cremaster 5 represents the moment when the testicles are finally released and sexual differentiation is fully attained. The lamenting tone of the opera suggests that Barney invisions this as a moment of tragedy and loss. The primary character is the Queen of Chain (played by Ursula Andress). Barney, himself, plays three characters who appear in the mind of the Queen: her Diva, Magician, and Giant. The Magician is a stand-in for Harry Houdini, who was born in Budapest in 1874 and appears as a recurring character in the Cremaster cycle.

The Little Shopping Trolley

Living on a shoestring in Montreal, a Vietnamese mother must act in bad faith to assert her right to buy 12 discount laundry detergents that she's been refused at a grocery store.

Sidecar

A young woman, Victoria Skye, decides to finally break up with her toxic boyfriend, Juan.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

When actress Sarah Marshall dumps aspiring musician Peter Bretter for rock star Aldous Snow, Peter's world comes crashing down. His best friend Brian suggests that Peter should get away from everything and to fly off to Hawaii to escape all his problems. After arriving in Hawaii and meeting the beautiful receptionist Rachel Jansen, Peter is shocked to see not only Aldous in Hawaii, but also Sarah.

Swingin'

When sixth-grader boy Qiu is bullied in school for having gay dads, his stepfather Howard, a flamboyant Jazz trumpet player, must confront his own nightmares of childhood bulling before he can provide his son a feeling of security.

Connection

The biggest boxing fight of 1960 takes an unexpected turn with the help of a powerful twin connection.

O'Horten

Odd Horton is dependable and contained: he's a train driver retiring after 40 years of service, living a simple life. His idea of adventure is to fly from one city in Norway to another. Starting on the night of his retirement dinner, Odd has a series of dislocating experiences: a boy insists that Odd sit by his bedside while he falls asleep; misadventure causes Odd to miss his last run; he witnesses an arrest; he assists an old man and makes a friend; he takes a trip with a blindfolded driver; he adopts a dog; he takes stock late one night at the roundhouse; he revisits his mother's disappointment in him. How should he live the rest of his life?

Boogeyman

Every culture has one – the horrible monster fueling young children's nightmares. But for Tim, the Boogeyman still lives in his memories as a creature that devoured his father 16 years ago. Is the Boogeyman real, or did Tim make it up to explain why his father abandoned his family?

Visions of Europe

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Sliding Doors

London publicist Helen, effortlessly slides between parallel storylines that show what happens when she does or does not catch a train back to her apartment. Love. Romantic entanglements. Deception. Trust. Friendship. Comedy. All come into focus as the two stories shift back and forth, overlap and surprisingly converge.

Crash!

Short film produced by the BBC about JG Ballard's Crash. “The film was a product of the most experimental, darkest phase of Ballard’s career. It was an era of psychological blowback from the sudden, shocking death of his wife in 1964, an era that had produced the cut-up ‘condensed novels’ of Atrocity plus a series of strange collages and ‘advertisers’ announcements. After Freud’s exploration within the psyche it is now the outer world of reality which must be quantified and eroticised. Later there were further literary experiments, concrete poems and ‘impressionistic’ film reviews, and an aborted multimedia theatrical play based around car crashes. After that came an actual gallery exhibition of crashed cars, replete with strippers and the drunken destruction of the ‘exhibits’ by an enraged audience.” (from: http://aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.blogspot.de/2013/01/short-film-adaptation-of-jg-ballards.html)

Exposure

Camille, an assistant at an art gallery, hosts Masato Kimura, a Japanese video game designer who has come to France to promote his latest creation. Indifferent to his world, Camille finds the man inscrutable until Masato asks to use her face in his next game.

Aban + Khorshid

Inspired by true events, Aban + Khorshid is an intimate portrait of two lovers, glimpsing into the world in which they met, moments before their execution for being gay.

Brace

On his first foray out onto London's thriving gay scene, newly single Adam meets Rocky, a handsome and mysterious drifter, with whom he shares an instant and undeniable chemistry. From the outset, Rocky is eager to reveal more of himself than Adam is ready for, and so the two maintain an uncomfortable pact of silence. As the pair grow closer, something has to give, and the truth about Rocky is explosively revealed. As the dust settles, the men are left to decide whether they can find acceptance in each other, by facing the truth about themselves.

Goldman v Silverman

Rod Goldman and Al Silverman are street performers who work the tourist scene of Times Square. Goldman gets no respect and Silverman is the first one to make sure of that.

Mind Games

After suffering a head injury during training, aspiring footballer Jordan traverses his own mind and memory in order to rediscover his passions and fix his broken relationship with his Coach Father.

Our Death

Two teen boys living in an isolated house in the mountains contemplate their existence while maintaining a video diary of their daily lives.

Bag Man

BAG MAN is the understated story of a 12 year old African American boy, who takes us on an introspective journey out of the city and into the remote countryside of upstate New York. With a mysterious duffle bag in hand, its contents unknown to us, we journey from the urban hustle of Harlem, into the winter-ravaged woodlands a world away. On the road, we slowly discover his real intentions, and the significance of what is hidden inside a young boy's bag.

The Prince of Val-Be

Plot unavailable

It Got Dark

Oca has left home today with his two little brothers and has taken them to the mountain with his asshole friends. But she has not come to spend the day in the field. And she doesn't plan on coming home.

Before It's Too Late

Brazil, the first week of 2019. A new president takes office in a scenario of fanaticism, prejudice, and violence. Locked in a hotel room, two teenagers decide to change the course of their lives, before it’s too late.

Without a Mom

Two gay dads fumble to provide their straight son with meaningful support after the loss of his first real love.

Attraction

A woman who claims independence and freedom finds herself involved in a situation that is beyond her control.

Fog

Is Fer a different child or is he a child like any other in a strange world? On the way home, Fer and her father experience strange events.

Rondó por el placer

A place that seems out of time for everyday life, a long line of women waiting. And inside a room, three of them sitting... a cello piece transports them to their own experience of pleasure, body and eroticism. An exploration from a female perspective of the audiovisual and its ability to produce pleasure beyond narrative schemes. Female pleasure, liberation, feminism, gender, appropriation of the body, sexual freedom, women, cello, music, old age.

Her Name Is Flor

Tere travels to sell her napkins with her daughter Flor, who loses one of her new shoes. Tere is forced to leave her alone for a moment, a fact that changes her life completely.

Go Play Outside

One summer morning, Abel decides to solve his parents' financial problems by taking matters into his own hands. Helped by his best friend Edwin, he roams the neighborhood in search of easy money and soon finds himself unable to resist the call of crime.

The Little Match Girl

An impoverished girl tries to sell matches on NYE. Shivering with cold and unable to sell her wares, she sits in a sheltered nook. Striking a match to keep warm, she sees things in the flame.

He Took His Skin Off for Me

A simple, domestic love story about a man who takes his skin off for his girlfriend, and why it probably wasn't the best idea...

The Missing Person

John Rosow drinks to forget. He is a former New York City cop turned Chicago-based private investigator. At the last minute, he is hired by someone he's never met to follow a middle-aged male subject on the soon-departing California Zephyr train to Los Angeles.

Covid Love

Plot unavailable

What You Believe

Jun-woo and Ji-ho went to an improvised drinking at a motel. Jun-woo is dating Dae-woong and met him there, but Ji-ho is not satisfied with Jun-woo.

Being Me

High school students Jae Nam and Seo Hyun are happy just to be together. But after an unfortunate live broadcast, Jae Nam is suddenly nowhere to be found.

Frankenweenie

When young Victor's pet dog Sparky (who stars in Victor's home-made monster movies) is hit by a car, Victor decides to bring him back to life the only way he knows how. But when the bolt-necked "monster" wreaks havoc and terror in the hearts of Victor's neighbors, he has to convince them (and his parents) that despite his appearance, Sparky's still the good loyal friend he's always been.

August without Emperor

Taking the Chilean coup as an example, a group of young officers plan to overthrow the Japanese government on V-J Day. They aim to abolish the post-war constitution, restore the national army and revive the traditional spirit of Japan. As the conspiracy is exposed, the coup squadrons are wiped out one by one. The remaining squadron takes over a night train bound for Tokyo.

Alleen Ik (Only me, me alone)

Longing for acceptance, a neurodivergent boy taunts the boundaries of his best friend: his brother.

Where the Birds Cry

Fourteen-year-old Szymon lives in a seaside village. He's going through one of the most turbulent stages in his life - puberty. However his monotonous life is interrupted by an unexpected visit from his childhood friend. An ordinary meeting on a cliff turns into his first summer romance.

Stop Train 349

Cold War drama about an East German man trying to escape to the West via a U.S. military train passing through the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany.

Bull's Heart

The story of a son who is secretly in love and a lonely, hard-working father. Each leads his own life – until one sultry summer day, their courses collide with a shock.

Paseo

Plot unavailable

Panda Syndrome

A young boy, Bjørn, discovers on his 17th birthday that his problems with the girls might not be self-inflicted.

Into the Night

A yuppie seeks help from two townspeople in finding his wife and daughter, during a blizzard storm. Based on the short story by Stephen King.

Free Zone

Rebecca, an American who has been living in Jerusalem for a few months now, has just broken off her engagement. She gets into a cab driven by Hanna, an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to Jordan, to the Free Zone, to pick up a large sum of money.

Refugee Poetry

The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.

The Quiet

In the midst of a deadly outbreak, a man returns home in search of family.

Murder on the Orient Express

Agatha Christie's classic whodunit speeds into the twenty-first century. World-famous sleuth Hercule Poirot has just finished a case in Istanbul and is returning home to London onboard the luxurious Orient Express. But, the train comes to a sudden halt when a rock slide blocks the tracks ahead. And all the thrills of riding the famous train come to a halt when a man discovered dead in his compartment, stabbed nine times. The train is stranded. No one has gotten on or gotten off. That can only mean one thing: the killer is onboard, and it is up to Hercule Poirot to find him.

Abrase

The fading love of two men, remembered. A relationship once vivid, now dissipating into a fog of partial remembrance; the memories of heartbreak and loss that bend and change as the years go by.

Not a Time to Celebrate

A young filmmaker has just unsatisfyingly captured the last shot for her film. While the crew encourages her to celebrate, she fears that the battle has just begun. Thankfully, she knows that worrying is never the answer. Instead, she turns to a traditional, evil-warding, garland-scattering ritual to direct all misfortune away from her film.